Stash Enhancement

I have been on a stash enhancing binge the last couple of weeks. Oh boy it *is* fun! this binge got started when I learned that I could buy amazing cashmere yarn at ridiculously low prices. The catch--you have to join ebay and buy the yarn from Richard at Colourmart in the UK. I have sucessfully avoided/boycotted ebay for 8 years after having a horrible experience in my first ebay transaction. Many of my tatting friends assured me it was an unfortunate "bad seller" experience and encouraged me to try ebay again--after all, there's awesome stuff to be had on ebay. I refused to bite. I figured there wasn't anything I neede that bad, and besides, I am so poor I don't need to be tempted by ebay. And so I wasn't--until the cashmere lace yarn came into my life. I just had to have some--and so I bit!

Ah, the evil fruit of ebay. I scroll through the listings of yarn, and patterns, and tatting things, and I drool and lust and waste oodles of time. I bought that first cone of cashmere. Next came a cone of lambswool and angora in a bright bubblegum pink. Now that will dazzle the eyes once knitted LOL But this week I have gone crazy finding vintage lace pattern in Burda's Anna magazine-the premier German needlearts publication. I won bids for 2 lots of Anna (6 issues) from the 80's and I just went gaga as I thumbed through each issue. Now those are great magazines. Why can't Americans have such great designs? Those mags came from a lady in Montana who bought the inventory of a craft store that closed. OK, not so bad. But then last night I won another auction for 1 issue. It's coming from Germany and the text is in German! The other ones were in English. Oh, but there is an amazing lace knit tablecloth in this issue that was screaming out to me. Yikes!

I have promised myself to improve and not buy any more stuff on ebay for awhile. I have lots of new lace patterns to choose from. After all, I just bought myself the Kinzel 2nd book of modern lace knitting and Meg Swansen's a gathering of lace as a birthday present to myself. I have enough lace yarn to knit for the rest of the summer right? Well, uh, sure. But I needed to go to the Knit n Purl to get a size 9 Addi (32") and some fingering wt. baby yarn to knit some booties for Kasey's baby. And darn that Melissa if she hadn't just stuffed the 50% off corner with tons of discontinued yarns. I could have spent $100 quick if I had the money. To make it worse, she had new skeins of Helen's Lace yarn from Lorna's Laces in beautiful colors. I WANT, I WANT!!!

My quickie trip to the lys turned into almost 2 hours as I drooled and fondled and tried to make a wise decision. I ended up choosing a some exquisite fingering wt. cotton yarn from Filatura di Crosa, a fine Italian yarn company. I love their yarns, but they are normally cost prohibitive. This yarn is called Dolce Amore (sweet love) and the color is a variegated baby pastel palette of pink, yellow, blue, green, and white. It is sweet to touch-so smooth! At $3/200yd. ball, I bought all 11 balls (enough for another pi shawl). I want to knit some lace with cotton threads, so this yarn will be a nice transition. I can adjust to the feel of cotton before going down to fine threads. I figure I can pick up the Helen's Lace another time as it isn't as likely to sell out as the closeout yarns.